The SDFLA Blog is dedicated to providing news and notes regarding federal practice in the Southern District of Florida. The New Times calls the blog "the definitive source on South Florida's federal court system." All tips on court happenings are welcome and will remain anonymous. Please email David Markus at dmarkus@markuslaw.com

Wednesday, December 05, 2012

B-girls trial still ongoing

Some girls flirt with some guys and take them for a bunch of money and we've made a federal case out of it. And a long one! It started back in early October! It's the Energizer Bunny trial.

Earlier this year, after weeks of hearing rumblings from a network of tipsters, David Lat, the 37-year-old managing editor of Above the Law
(ATL), one of the most widely read legal blogs on the Web, published a
story he never dreamed possible. In the post, cheekily titled "Where's
LeBoeuf? An Update on Doings at Dewey," Lat broke the news that one of
most prestigious law firms in the world, Dewey & LeBoeuf, which
employed more than 1,300 attorneys in 12 countries in 2007, was on the
verge of imploding. "I was flummoxed," says Lat, a former Assistant
United States Attorney. "It seemed absurd."

Dewey & LeBoeuf was
the child of a 2007 boom-time megamerger between a 100-year-old firm
bearing the name of three-term New York governor Thomas Dewey and
another old Gotham stalwart that represented some of the nation's
biggest utilities and insurance companies. In the legal world, the
possible dissolution of Dewey & LeBoeuf was on par with Lehman
Brothers' monumental bankruptcy in 2008. Lat, a blogger by trade, had
the skinny on what was really happening in those hallowed halls. Armed
with a network of inside sources, a dogged reporter's sense, and a good,
old-fashioned hunch, Lat dropped the latest in a string of bombs on the
beleaguered legal profession.After that initial post, the doomsday stories—and scoops—came fast
and furious: Dozens of partners were leaving (ATL had the names), and an
internal memo (leaked to Lat) actually blamed "U.S. legal blogs" for
making some of the firm's woes public. That was followed by the
announcement of a 60-day-notice policy designed to retain the remaining
partners—more than 20 percent had announced their depatures by this time
—and reports that Dewey was considering closing three international
offices. In late April, Steven Davis was ousted from his role as
chairman, and the Manhattan District Attorney's office began a criminal
probe to investigate his actions. Finally, on May 28, three months after
Lat's first post, Dewey filed for bankruptcy. For Lat and his staff,
the story was only just beginning."We would get our intel in a number of different ways," he says,
citing a flood of e-mails and texts, including information from friends
and friends of friends who worked there and a "well-placed source at the
firm" who leaked the memo. ATL even unearthed details about the
company's downfall in what appeared to be minor stories—like the firm
prohibiting lawyers from using Federal Express and not being able to
afford black car service. "[Web] traffic during the Dewey period was
phenomenal," recalls Lat, whose breaking stories were cited by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
Throughout the summer, Lat kept tabs on the key players, digging around
for answers about what went wrong and reporting that, even as the firm
was sinking, many of its multi-millionaire partners were still pulling
in six-figure checks. "They were like pigs at the trough, all muscling
each other aside to get a share of the feed," Lat says. "The story
delved into a lot of themes, whether it's greed or anxiety or the
distribution of spoils in the legal profession." In other words, it was
catnip for Lat and the ATL faithful.

The government has historically had broad power
to search travelers and their property at the border. But that
prerogative is being challenged as more people travel with extensive
personal and business information on devices that would typically
require a warrant to examine.

Several court cases seek to limit the ability of border agents to
search, copy and even seize travelers’ laptops, cameras and phones
without suspicion of illegal activity.

“What we are asking is for a court to rule that the government must have
a good reason to believe that someone has engaged in wrongdoing before
it is allowed to go through their electronic devices,” said Catherine
Crump, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who is representing plaintiffs in two lawsuits challenging digital border searches.

A decision in one of those suits, Abidor v. Napolitano, is expected
soon, according to the case manager for Judge Edward R. Korman, who is
writing the opinion for the Federal District Court for the Eastern
District of New York.

In that case, Pascal Abidor, who is studying for his doctorate in
Islamic studies, sued the government after he was handcuffed and
detained at the border during an Amtrak trip from Montreal to New York.
He was questioned and placed in a cell for several hours. His laptop was
searched and kept for 11 days.

According to government data, these types of searches are rare: about
36,000 people are referred to secondary screening by United States Customs and Border Protection daily, and roughly a dozen of those travelers are subject to a search of their electronic devices.

Courts have long held that Fourth Amendment protections against
unreasonable searches do not apply at the border, based on the
government’s interest in combating crime and terrorism. But Mr. Pascal’s
lawsuit and similar cases question whether confiscating a laptop for
days or weeks and analyzing its data at another site goes beyond the
typical border searches. They also depart from the justification used in
other digital searches, possession of child pornography.

“We’re getting more into whether this is targeting political speech,” Ms. Crump said.

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The Southern District of Florida blog was started by David Oscar Markus, who is a criminal trial and appellate lawyer in Miami, Florida. He frequently practices in federal courts around the country, including his hometown, the Southern District of Florida and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. He is a former law clerk to then-Chief Judge of the District, Edward B. Davis.